Strangers in Bars
by dodging words
Summary: She spends every night at the bar now. But every night, he's there, too.


**Disclaimer: I don't own it. **

* * *

_And every day, in every way, she looks the same,  
__And every care you used to have just seems to float away._

"You need to stop, you know."

She is looking at him now, her dark brown eyes vaguely thoughtful, as she sets her drink down on the table.

"Stop what?"

"Stop trying to save me," she elaborates matter-of-factly, and then she picks up her drink again, taking a long sip.

He sets his eyes on the dirty, tarnished white wall. "I don't know what you're talking about. And neither do you. You're drunk."

"Oh, I'm not drunk yet," she reminds him. "I just got here twenty minutes ago. Don't think that I don't know. Do you see the bartender on the other side? His name is Jim. He talks to me sometimes. He says you're always here, always waiting for me to leave." Her drink is nearly finished now, and she polishes it off, emptying the glass of its last few drops.

"What does it matter, anyway, Mitchie?"

"I don't want you wasting your time."

"Well, I don't want you wasting yours, either."

Her broken expression illustrates everything that she wants to say, everything she would say if they were a movie: _I'm not worth it, it's too late for me, you can't save me._ But they aren't a movie, and so she says nothing, but she waves over Jim the bartender so that he can fill up her glass again.

"Shane really didn't want to hurt you," he says abruptly. He almost regrets it when Mitchie's hand grips the glass too tightly. He thinks she won't react any further than that, but then she speaks.

"Shane didn't give a shit about me, and you know that just as well as I do." Her voice is very well-controlled. She doesn't sound angry or sad or defiant—just flat and emotionless, like she is hollow and unfeeling. He's surprised at how different this Mitchie is, how she is almost entirely unrecognizable from the girl she used to be.

"He loved you."

"Apparently, love is very easily forgotten, then."

"Don't—don't do this to yourself," he says, and the words come out sounding like a strangled plea. In the back of his mind, he recalls once again how she is the only person who can make him lose all his control and drop his carefully structured façade.

She smiles wryly. "You don't know how many times I've heard that, Nate." But he's looking away, looking at that tarnished white wall again, and her cynical smile fades because Shane is the one who should be hurt, and not him. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"I don't want you to be sorry."

"Do you think I fell in love with the wrong person?"

"I think you fell in love at the wrong time."

"Shane wasn't right for me." She frowns, her forehead crinkling. "I should have met you first."

"Maybe," he agrees offhandedly.

"He dicked me over so many times."

"I know."

"But every single fucking time, I came back to him."

"I know."

"I was so stupid."

"I know."

"You're stupid, too. For being here. For staying."

"I know."

"Do you know everything?"

"No." He tears his eyes from the wall so that he can look at her. "I don't know why Shane let you go."

"I don't know, either." Jim the bartender is back to fill up her glass again, and she chugs this one before he has even walked away. "I don't know," she says again, and her eyes are unfocused.

"I'm sorry." He hates how someone is always apologizing whenever they are together. He wishes they could just _be_, without all the mess and complications and those stupid fucking white walls.

"Stop being sorry."

"If I had met you first, I would never have let you go."

"Stop that. We're crossing over into corny-movie territory." She sighs again, and the sound is too jaded, too exhausted, too worn-out to appease him. "Shane and I used to act like a corny movie," she remembers, and her beautiful smile is bitter and almost unsettling. "I know it used to hurt you to watch." She pulls out a pack of cigarettes, already half-empty, from the inside pocket of her leather jacket. "Cigarette?"

"I don't smoke. One of us needs to be responsible."

She ignores the second part of his reply. "You should. It's relaxing. You're easily stressed out, Nate, you could use a blunt."

"You're going to kill yourself."

"What does it matter, anyway?" Her tone is mocking, repeating his words from earlier. "Why the fuck does it matter?" She takes a long drag and then adds as an afterthought, "And don't you dare even think of answering that."

He honors her wish, staring at those walls again.

"You think you love me, Nate, but you don't. You don't love me. And you're wasting your time, you're wasting time that could be—that should be—spent doing something else. Something productive, something practical. You shouldn't be chasing down empty girls in shitty bars." Another drag. "Go home, Nate."

He doesn't say anything for a long time, and it isn't until she's nearly finished with cigarette number two that he articulates anything at all. "And me? You're going to kill _me_, Mitchie."

"You don't love me," she says again. "You forget stupid crushes. You forget your best friend's ex-girlfriend who lost herself to drugs and alcohol and sex. You forget all those insignificant things, because at the end of the day, they don't mean shit."

"You've got everything wrong, Mitchie. I guess drugs really do fuck with your brain."

She stares at him, her eyes vacant. "You're such a nice guy. Don't be stupid. Don't waste another second in this place. You don't belong here."

"Will I see you tomorrow?" he asks her instead.

"You ask me that every single night."

"Will I?" he presses.

"Same time, same place." She smiles that chilling smile again. "As always."

—

Mitchie Torres has always had a hard time telling the truth.

"She's not here," Jim the bartender informs him. "Haven't seen her all day."

He glances at his watch. It's almost two in the morning, he needs to go home. "When you see her, tell her I was here, will you?"

"Sure thing, kid."

But the next night, and the night after that, and then the next night after that, Jim the bartender says he still hasn't been able to deliver the message.

Shane's face is contorted in pain. "When you saw her at the bar, all those nights…" He chokes out, "She hated me, didn't she?"

Unlike Mitchie, Nate doesn't like to lie. "I think it was worse than that, Shane."

"Worse?"

"Yeah. She loved you."

—

"Hey, did she find a new bar or something? Where did she go?" Jim the bartender is genuinely curious. He wipes the martini flute he is holding one, two, three times, and then he repeats the action.

"I don't know."

"Too bad. I liked her, she was a sweet girl. Surprised me how she always came alone, though."

"You're talking about Mitchie?"

Jim the bartender looks genuinely surprised. "Well, yeah. Who else, kid?"

"I don't know," he says. "There is no one else. There's never been anyone else."

A look of genuine understanding and compassion washes over Jim the bartender's face. "You like her, huh, kid?"

"You couldn't tell?"

"Well…I thought so. But it's hard to tell with you. You aren't as easy to read as most of the kids that come around here, that's for sure. Same with Mitchie."

The stained white walls are too fucking familiar now. "Mitchie's the hardest of them all."

"You really don't know where she went? You don't see her anymore?"

"I think she's in rehab. Heard she's finally going to college, got into Stanford. Engaged to a lawyer."

Jim the bartender's eyes widen. "Whoa. Really?"

He laughs, a curt, bitter sound escaping from his throat. "Nope. She's dead. Suicide. Found her in my apartment." He gestures for Jim to fill up his glass again, vodka, straight up. "My walls are stained with red now."

The alcohol is burning his throat, but he just doesn't give a fuck. Because in the back of his mind, he remembers her eyes, her hair, her voice, her smile, and it's so fucking painful.

He'd rather just stare at those flawed white walls as the memories fade.

_She could be money, cars, fear of the dark,  
__Your best friends are just strangers in bars. _

* * *

**Author's Note: ****PLEASE REVIEW AND SUBSCRIBE**** to read more from me! (:  
****I have two other oneshots posted so far if you're interested.  
****Thanks for reading!**

**Song credits go to: Whoever She Is by The Maine **


End file.
